Dawn of the Living-Impaired Read online

  Deadie. Had to act like I was a deadie. I gazed at Val with an expression of slack-jawed greed, while trying to make meaningful eye contact with her.

  She wouldn't look at me.

  Deadie. Deadie. I shuffled closer to the truck and let a guttural noise come out of my throat. I belched.

  That was a mistake. The heavy churning weight in my stomach sent up a vile bubble and I was tasting the brain meat all over again. My throat hitched. I suddenly knew I was going to spew a geyser.

  Somehow, I held it down.

  First, Val.

  The Fat Man howled with laughter. "Looks like some boy's still hungry. Want your prize, sonny?"

  All around me, I could hear livies crowding close, cheering, egging me on, even placing bets as to what I'd bite first.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar, pallid face, framed in limp blond hair.

  Patty. The moment I looked at her, I saw her recognize me. Her eyes got wide, her mouth dropped open, and I knew she was about to blow the whole deal.

  I caught her eye. If ever a guy had wished for telepathy, it was me, and it was right then. I silently urged her to stay cool, begged her not to blow my cover.

  Her chin quivered. I saw her throat work as she fought down a gag. But then she gave a slight nod. She understood.

  Good girl. Smart girl.

  Time to move. It was my only chance, the chance I'd been waiting for.

  I'd have to be quick in order to take them by surprise. First the handlers, while they were distracted by Val. Shoulder them aside. Slam shut the tailgate with Val still in there.

  And then run around to the driver's door, jump in, and take off. With Val safe in the truck, and the Fat Man as a hostage to get us past the guards and out of town. Next stop, anyplace but here.

  I could do it, I knew I could. They weren't expecting any surprises from a deadie. The walking meat in the pens were too well-trained. They knew better than to move against the handlers, or other livies, unless the situation called for it. I could thank that little bit of conditioned response for keeping me alive.

  "Here you go, honey-bunch," Big Joe chortled. He nudged Val toward the tailgate.

  She stumbled on chained ankles, fell to her knees. A hurt grunt escaped her. She looked up through a veil of hair and saw me. Really saw me. Just like with Patty, her mouth dropped open and my name was poised on her lips.

  I shook my head, trying to make it look like a deadie nerve-jittering impulse. My hungry-sounding moan was a warning.

  "Uh-uh-uh," Val said, chains clanking as she trembled. She knew me. "Suh … skuh …"

  No! No, oh, goddammit!

  Sudden spiking fear made my stomach's heavy cargo slide and bubble. Because that was hope dawning on Val's face. Hope, and joy, and all the things I'd always wanted to see in her expression. Just not now!

  A wavering lunatic's laugh issued from Val. She started to smile, started to reach out toward me.

  She was ruining everything! People were looking at me more closely, seeing the solidity of my flesh – scrawny, maybe, but not dried deadie flesh.

  "Shut up," I said, low but urgent, under a rising murmur from the crowd. "Shut up, Val."

  Any second, suspicion would turn to certainty and that would be all she wrote. And all because Val couldn't get with the program.

  A line of phantom pain lanced around my skull. It traced a curve where the bone saw would grind and scream. Poetic justice, they'd think. I would feel the ripping of capillaries as they took the top of my head off like a layer of sod.

  The stupid bitch! We were so close! So close to getting out of this with our lives, and she couldn't play along for two minutes?

  A glottal howl burst from me. After everything I'd done, after the horrible thing I'd done, and this was the thanks I got!

  "Scotty –" Val said, but her weak voice was drowned out by my furious cry. No one else could have heard.

  But I did.

  She called me Scotty. Again.

  I lunged for her, shouldering the handlers aside just like in my plan. Even better than my plan, because in my surge of angry strength, I sent them flying. I seized a handful of Val's thick dark hair and dragged her headfirst out of the pick-up.

  The Coliseum, my acquaintance had said. Like in the days of ancient Rome. I remembered something else they did in Rome. After a feast.

  I turned my head to the side and stuck a finger down my throat. My body heaved. A torrent of hot cerebral slush surged up my gullet and splattered everywhere.

  I had to make room.

  *

  The handlers took me to the barn. I could barely walk, my gut feeling bloated. I had consumed a lot of fresh meat. Would probably be days picking the strings of her hair out of my teeth.

  I hadn't been able to get through her skull. My jaw just couldn't apply that sort of bone-cracking pressure. I'd had to go for the neck, instead.

  And then, once she hadn't been able to talk any more and blow my cover, I guess I sort of went a little nuts.

  They put me in with the deadies again. I was too stuffed and lethargic to worry about whether my disguise and their training would hold up. One or the other must have, because none of them made a move against me.

  Or maybe, on some instinctual level, it was because they recognized me as one of their own. I had never actually died, but inside, I was a deadie all the same. I had to be. No genuine livie could have done what I had.

  A few days later, when I was finally starting to feel physically back to normal – mentally and emotionally, I was as much a deadie as ever – they brought a new one to the barn.

  Thin. Limp hair that might have started out blond. She had sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, and her skin was mottled with stains under the rags of her clothes.

  Not a bad disguise at all.

  But then, I knew Patty was a smart girl.

  She stood near me, neither of us speaking, as we stared with the deadies out through the fence at the town, and waited for the next event.

  THE BARROW-MAID

  The death-cry of Sveinthor Otkelsson ripped through battle-clangor, as harsh and sudden as the blade that had ripped through his mail-coat.

  Friend and foe, ally and enemy, all who heard it fell silent. The fighting ceased as men looked to one another, astonished.

  Could such a cry truly have come from the throat of Sveinthor Otkelsson? Sveinthor Wolf-Helmet? Sveinthor, called the Unkillable?

  He had led the first assault against the shield-wall in defense of his uncle Kjartan's fortress, plunging deep into the armies of King Hallgeir the Proud. Arrows had rained all around him but never once touched his flesh. He had beheaded Hallgeir's standard-bearer, then cleaved Hallgeir himself in the shoulder so that the king's torso was hewn nearly to the belt.

  A death-cry? Sveinthor Otkelsson, voicing a death-cry?

  It could not be believed.

  No one moved. No living thing made a sound. Even the cawing of ravens was stilled, and it seemed that the wind itself paused in scudding dark clouds across the sky.

  Then, as one, those nearest Sveinthor drew back. He stood alone amidst a mound of bodies, most slain by the thirsty work of his own sword, Wolf’s Tooth. And the blood ran thick from his belly, spreading over the earth in a wide red stain.

  He was Sveinthor Otkelsson, whose ship Wulfdrakkar had gone a’viking to far lands, bringing back plunder of gold and silver, slaves, amber, ivory, and jet. He had rescued the beautiful Hildirid from becoming an unwilling bride, unmanning her captor with a knife-stroke.

  Even if not for the wyrd that had been prophesized by the sorceress Sigritha when Sveinthor was no more than a boy, this moment could not have been foreseen.

  But now Wolf’s Tooth had dropped from his grasp, and his hands went to his wound, and the blood was a waterfall between his fingers. His wolf-headed helm, its gilded nasal and eye-pieces red-spattered but still glittering gold, turned this way and that, as if seeking out his killer.

  A single raven sc
reeched. All who heard it knew it to be an omen of the most fearsome sort. The raven was Odin’s own bird, and surely Odin had taken notice of the battle. Perhaps Odin was, even now, dispatching the dreaded Valkyries.

  Then, as Sveinthor toppled, with his belly split open and the tangle of his guts spilling out of him, there came another cry, furious with rage. It was torn from the throat of Ulfgrim the Squint, long a friend and blood-brother and oathsman of Sveinthor.

  In his fury, Ulfgrim charged. Rallied by his actions, the others of Sveinthor’s men followed, as did Kjartan’s own forces. What came next was not so much battle, as butchery. Some of the defenders tried to form again their shield-wall, but too many fled in terror, and the rest were soon cut down. The victors moved among the fallen, giving aid to their allies and the final mercy to their enemies, and stripping the dead of their valuables.

  Kjartan, himself, aged and white-bearded, rode from his fort to the place where Sveinthor had stood. He wept openly and without shame. There had been talk in the mead-halls that Kjartan might make Sveinthor his heir. Now that hope was gone, dashed to pieces like a ship storm-hurled against unforgiving stony shores. Sveinthor was dead. With his last breath, he had closed his blood-soaked fingers around the hilt of Wolf’s Tooth, and held it now, in an unbreakable grip.

  They bore him back to Kjartan’s hall. The day was won, the enemy scattered and fleeing, but there was precious little joy and celebration.

  Three others of Sveinthor’s men had perished bravely in the battle. Eyjolf Rust-Beard, Bork Gunnarsson, and Thrain the Merry were to be placed alongside Sveinthor, in honor.

  Kjartan had for them a great burial-mound built, a chamber filled with goods for the afterlife. There were bundles of firewood, jugs of mead, furs and blankets, tools, weapons, grain, meat and cheese. Into this tomb was placed Sveinthor's wealth, the plunder of villages and forts and monasteries. Silver cups and platters, gold brooches, piles of hack-silver, beads of amber and jet. Kjartan added many more treasures, so that the mound was as rich as any gold-vault of the Dwarves below the earth.

  Sveinthor was laid upon his barrow, at the center of the chamber. His helm was polished and shining, the wolf’s tail that hung from its crown brushed smooth. He was covered with the pelts of wolves, and his sword, Wolf’s Tooth, was set across his breast, its hilt still clutched tight in his dead hand and its blade still clotted dark with the blood of his enemies.

  As these preparations were being done, Ulfgrim the Squint sought out Hildirid, who had been Sveinthor’s woman.

  “Kjartan has promised to provide a slave-girl to accompany Sveinthor into the mound,” he told her. “There is no need for you to die with him.”

  Hildirid, who was tall and slender but proud-figured, said nothing. She had hair the color of gold seen by torchlight, which fell past her waist in long plaits tucked through the belt of her tunic. Her cloak was seal’s skin, pinned at the breast with a brooch of walrus-ivory, and her eyes were sea-blue and steady.

  “You can escape this dire fate,” Ulfgrim urged her. “Already, Kjartan’s wise-woman is preparing the poison. You have but to agree, and the slave-girl will go in your place.”

  “Does not Unn of the dimpled cheeks go with Eyjolf, her husband?” Hildirid asked. “Is not Ainslinn, Bork’s favorite, being readied to follow him? You would have Sveinthor, who loved you like a brother, go to his grave-barrow with a stranger slave-girl?”

  “Thrain does,” argued Ulfgrim, “for Thrain had no woman of his own, and will need one to tend him in the afterlife. You can live, sweet Hildirid. Live and go forth from here, and marry a strong man and have many fine sons and fair daughters.”

  He touched her hand then, but Hildirid drew away. “I was fated to be his and his alone, forever,” she said. “Skarri the Blind prophesized it to us. It is my wyrd.”

  Ulfgrim scoffed. “And we have seen for ourselves how well the wyrd prophesized for Sveinthor came to pass. Mad old women and blind old men, pah!” And he spat on the ground.

  “I was fated to be his,” Hildirid said again.

  “There is no fate but what a man makes his own. Sveinthor went wrapped in the confidence of his wyrd, and it did make him bold and daunted his enemies, but in the end, did his wyrd prove true? Look there, Hildirid. Sveinthor the Unkillable … covered with gold and glory, but as cold and dead as a haunch of beef." He clutched at her hand again. “Come away with me, instead. I may not be so handsome as Sveinthor, but I swear I can love you as much, if not better.”

  This time she did not merely draw away, but slapped him so that her palm cracked smartly across his cheek. “I will follow Sveinthor,” she said, and her voice was like ice.

  Ulfgrim flushed dark, angered and embarrassed. His eyes, already narrow, narrowed further. “It was I who learned of your capture,” he said in a snarl. “It was my cunning that formed the plan to rescue you. I would have done it myself, but Sveinthor insisted. By rights, Hildirid, you should have been mine.”

  She walked away from him then without a word, head high and back straight in her dignity.

  Later, when the burial mound was all but finished, Kjartan assembled his people to bid farewell to Sveinthor and his men. There were many verses and poems spoken by skalds, recounting the deeds and honor of their lives, mourning their passing and celebrating their entrance into Valhalla.

  Then Kjartan’s wise-woman brought forth the cups of poison. Unn of the dimpled cheeks drank first, and kissed Eyjolf’s lips before lying down beside him. The woman Kjartan had chosen to accompany Thrain smiled at the great honor she had been given as she raised the cup. Thrain’s favorite dog, a great shaggy mongrel called Bryn-Loki, was strangled with a rope and set at his master’s feet.

  The slave-girl Ainslinn wailed and screamed and would not drink. She tried to flee, then tried to fight, and finally had to be strangled as Bryn-Loki had been. A disgrace, but only to be expected from an Irish girl and a Christian.

  And then the cup came to Hildirid, who was arrayed like a queen, with her long hair loose and shining.

  As she took the cup, she saw Ulfgrim with his dark eyes pleading. But she drank deep of the bitter liquid, and as she felt its lassitude begin to creep through her limbs, she kissed Sveinthor and sank down next to his barrow, on a blanket of soft wool.

  She opened her eyes to the chill, misty dark, and felt a pain all throughout her body so sharp and crushing that it was as if she was being rent asunder by beasts. It was Niflheim, kingdom of the dead, realm of the goddess Hel. And was it Hel’s own hound, Garm, grinding her bones in its fierce mouth? Was it the dragon Nidhug, leaving off its eternal gnawing at the roots of Yggdrasil the World-Tree?

  Then the pain ebbed like a tide, receding from her limbs. Hildirid shivered in the blackness. Her mouth felt dry and parched with a terrible thirst, and her innards were a hollow ache.

  Slowly, stiffly, she moved. The cold wrapped her like a fog, and she pulled her cloak close around her shoulders.

  The air was heavy with a reek of corruption, so thick it was like a taste. Yet, beneath it, she could smell other scents. Strong cheese. Heady mead.

  Her dark-blinded hands sought out carefully over the unseen contours and edges. Soft wool. Hard stone. Rushes and pebbles and loose earth. Stacked logs of wood, the bark coarse beneath her fingers. The lushness of fur. Wolf’s fur, from the pelts that covered Sveinthor, and that was when she knew where she was.

  In the barrow. In the burial-mound. Entombed in the black, entombed with the dead.

  And was she dead? Was this death? Was this the truth of Niflheim? Alone and sightless and trembling from the chill?

  Yet she breathed, and when she pressed her hand to her breast she could feel the quick thudding of her heart. With the little knife she kept on her belt, she pricked her thumb and felt warm blood well from it, which she licked away.

  Still carefully, groping her way, she rose to her knees and found Sveinthor’s chest beneath the pelts. She touched the silver Thor’s-hammer amulet he wore aroun
d his neck, touched his wiry beard, touched his face.

  His flesh was like a lump of cold tallow, greasy with a residue that smeared off onto her fingertips. His mouth gaped and did not stir with breath.

  Hildirid rested her brow on his chest. Then she searched blindly through the goods in the barrow until she had a candle, and the means to strike a flame.

  The flickering light sent shadows dancing over the wealth and the weapons and the bodies. Unn and the slave-girl were peaceful in death. Ainslinn had died with her eyes bulging in horror, the bruises from the knotted strangling-rope livid on her slim neck. Bryn-Loki, Thrain’s dog, lay with tongue protruding and death-rigid legs jutting like sticks.

  The smells of corruption wafted from them. Hildirid saw skin gone waxen and pallid, flesh sunken and slack. They were dead, dead one and all … and yet she was alive. Somehow, she was alive.

  She had drunk of the poison. She had drained the cup to its very dregs. It had coursed through her veins. She remembered sinking, sinking like a rock, into the bottomless depths.

  Her gaze fell upon the jugs of mead, the loaves, the wheels of cheese. Hunger led her to pull off a chunk of bread, but Hildirid hesitated with it at her lips.

  Should she? Was there any use in eating, in drinking? Why prolong a life that was doomed to a miserable end?

  Better if she ignored the urges of her body and lay back down to wait for death. Better still if she took out her knife again and seated it in her breast or sliced it across her wrists, to hurry death along.

  Yet the bread was in her hand. It was stale and nearly as hard as stone, but could not have been more appetizing had it just come fresh from the baker’s oven. She tore into it with her teeth, and when it soon proved a chore to chew, opened a jug of mead and soaked the bread to soften it in the potent honey-brew.

  Sated, she moved the candle so that its light played over the various treasures. Here was a tiny ship, the Wulfdrakkar in miniature, with red shields along the sides above the tiny oars, and its growling wolf’s head prow. There was a set of hnefatafl-men, two armies carved from ivory and soapstone, arranged in ranks on their board. A bone flute. A polished-amber figure of a wolf. Chests of silver and gold. Monk’s crosses. A heavy silver plate with designs of Christian saints and angels upon it.